Another problem that you will face is that the rubber butt plates on many models of shotgun are curved
out at the butt toe and may be very helpful to some shooters. Where we run into a problem is the back
of most recoil pads are absolutely flat, and the stock in to which they are fitted to must also be flat. On
these types of stocks, quite a bit of wood is removed and the pitch is altered. So now being the pitch
distance is different this should be taken into account before any cutting or shaping is done.
Sometimes a customer might desire to have the pitch change has been made toward improving his
shooting. If this is so, the gunsmiths should bear in mind that the greater the pitch, the greater the
tendency to under shoot. If a gun has little or no pitch, this will cause a gun to overshoot.
SAWING OFF THE STOCK BUTT
Wins sawing off the butt of the stock, always use a very narrow bladed hacksaw and always keep at
least 1/16 of an inch to the butt side of the line. The reason for this is if the wood chips, which usually
occurs, it will not affect the finish on the remaining portion of the stock. Use a hacksaw or saw blade
having about fourteen teeth per inch. However using a hacksaw will produce an uneven face on the
wood, which will require a lot of flattening out. A better choice to cut off the stock is to use a wide set
crosscut handsaw, which will give you a straight cut. The trouble in using the common and crosscut saw
blade is that it often causes a long splinter to rip off. When this happens, the entire stock must be
refinished.
After all of my years in Gunsmithing and mounting recoil pads I believe the best set up for sawing off a
piece of finish gun stock is a miter box and backsaw. The reason for this is that the find pitch of the
teeth on a backsaw gives less chance of wood splintering and the guide in a miter box keeps the saw in
line. The big problem is that the gunstock is not flat, and not parallel to the miter box base. To use a
miter box it is necessary to build up under the narrow in of the stock so that the saw will cut at 90
degrees to the end throughout the entire width of the butt stock.
I find that this method is very desirable when a gunsmith does a great deal of world work on may already
finish stock. You might even be able to mount some tide of adjusting screw to the miter box to elevate
the narrow end of the gun stock to obtain a 90 degree saw cut. It made properly a gunstock of any size
or shape could be easily set up for cutting off.